We have finally released Filter Forge 3.0 for both Mac and PC:
http://www.filterforge.com/features/whats-new3.html

For those who are not yet familiar with Filter Forge, it's a versatile 2D procedural texturing tool that works both as a standalone app and as a Photoshop plugin and lets you generate resolution-independent seamless textures with bump, diffuse and normal maps with resolutions up to 65000x65000 pixels. Here's the free trial: http://www.filterforge.com/download/

http://www.filterforge.com/images/features/filter-editor.jpg

New features in Filter Forge 3.0:

Progressive Preview (click the picture below to see the video):

The idea behind progressive previews is to give you a rough, low-resolution preview of the rendered image as fast as possible, then gradually refine it in subsequent rendering passes until the image reaches the final level of quality. By default, the first rendering pass of the progressive preview is up to 16 times faster than the original preview method! Read more... (http://www.filterforge.com/features/version3/progressive-previews.html)

In previous Filter Forge versions, you could only use a single source image or a Photoshop layer, which was one of Filter Forge's biggest limitations. Starting with version 3.0, Filter Forge allows you to use multiple source images. Read more... (http://www.filterforge.com/features/version3/multiple-source-images.html)

Starting with version 3.0, both filter authors and end-users can take advantage of fully editable Bézier curves. The curve editor supports any number of anchor points, four point types (corner, cusp, smooth and symmetrical) and six curve continuation methods for defining curve behavior in the areas beyond the endpoints. Read more... (http://www.filterforge.com/features/version3/bezier-curves.html)

The third beta stage finally introduces the long-awaited flexible user interface with new resizable panels, which allows users to customize the size of the rendering preview area, the filter editing area and the script editing window in the Filter Editor. Read more... (http://www.filterforge.com/features/version3/flexible-ui.html)

Filter Forge 3.0 displays both original and modified images side-by-side and allows you to drag the before/after separator to better see how filters affect various parts of the image. Read more... (http://www.filterforge.com/features/version3/before-after-wipet.html)

Filter Forge 3.0 introduces Edge Detector, a new component that detects edges in images using several methods, including the Sobel algorithm. We’ve had a couple of snippets for edge detection in the Filter Library since version 1.0, but the new component is faster and easier to use. Read more... (http://www.filterforge.com/features/version3/edge-detector-component.html)

Filter Forge 3.0 offers expanded scripting API that adds support for Perlin and uniform noise functions and allows access to the blending modes in scripts. Read more and see sample scripts and pics... (http://www.filterforge.com/features/version3/script-api.html)

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